Wu Tao-yuan (courteously styled Wu Tao-tzu), born in Yangti, Honan, studied calligraphy as a boy with Ho Chih-chang and Chang Hsu but, having achieved little success, turned instead to painting, which he mastered before the age of twenty--painting being a form of art in which talent and temperament count for more than perseverance and practice.
Wu once served in Hsiachiu, Yenchou, as a district magistrate in charge of the prison and the police. There on the wall of an earthen building beside a bridge, he is said to have painted a hundred horses which, as soon as the picture was completed, leapt off the wall, dashed over the bridge, and disappeared. From then on, the bridge was called the Bridge of the Painted Horses.
Wu was recruited to the palace during the reign of the T'ang emperor Ming-huang (712—756), and from there his fame spread throughout the empire. His style was modeled on that of the Southern Liang master Chang Seng-yao, of whom he was said by his contemporaries to be an incarnation.
The Eastern Chin master Ku K'ai-chih is said to have painted a portrait so lifelike that the woman of whom it was made would groan if the painting was pricked with a thorn; similarly, Wu Tao-tzu painted on the wall of a monastery a donkey so real that the monks were kept awake by the sound of its clopping about each night. When Chang Seng-yao dotted the eye of a dragon he had painted, it soared off the wall with a crack of thunder; Wu's dragon rippled its scales as though about to take off and on rainy days enveloped itself in smoke and mist. His artistry, combining the wondrous skills of Ku and Chang, was preternatural.
The Emperor Ming-huang once asked Wu to paint a landscape on a white wall in the palace. Wu mixed a pan of ink, splashed it on the wall, and covered the area with a cloth screen. After a moment he removed the screen and asked the emperor to take a look: before them lay a vista replete with mountains, streams, trees, figures, birds, and animals. The emperor gazed at the picture a long time, and sighed in admiration. Pointing to one corner Wu said, "Below this cliff is a little cave, and in it is a fairy immortal. If I knock, there'll be an answer." Wu tapped it with his finger. Suddenly the door opened and a servant boy appeared. "The cave is exquisitely beautiful inside," Wu told the emperor. "I request to go in first, and I hope your majesty will follow." Having entered the cave, Wu beckoned to the emperor from inside, but the emperor was unable to go in. Soon the door closed. No one knew where Wu had gone, while the wall, white as before, showed not the slightest trace of ink.
This story comes from the 16th century work Lieh-hsien ch'uan-chuan, or Complete Biographies of the Immortals. Wu tao-tzu is famed as one of ancient China's greatest painters, but none of his works survive today.
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